Hi everyone,

I'm new to posting on the forums here although I have read them quite a bit. Anyway I'm coming looking for a bit of advice from people with more experience and wisdom then me.

My situation is that there is a guy at my work who is Catholic, when I first discovered he was I just kept waiting for him to come preaching to me and so I had some information about evolution ready in my holster for my defense. I guess perhaps though i was just sterotyping him because he never really said much to me about his faith. anyway it wasn't until just recently that I've come into discussion with him when the topic of abortion/objective truth/and immortal spirits came up.

To sum things up briefly I overheard him saying that he and a friend were going to protest or pray as he said it outside an abortion clinic. I got rather upset at this and finally took it as an opportunity to say something to him. I asked him why he thought he had the right to force his belief's on those women and why he just couldn't respect their right to choose.

His response was different from what I've heard before and I wasn't prepared for it. He gave me a scenario and said something like this: "what if I told you I'm pro choice too and I believe in a man's right to choose and whether or not I agree with his choices I don't think others should be able to force their morality on him and he should be able to choose for himself."

I agreed with him. then he said "ok well that is why I am pro-rape, I mean I'm personally against rape but that's my morality and I don't think I should be allowed to force it on other people, they should have the right to choose for themselves."
Of course he wasn't pro rape but he had made his point and I guess it got to me.

Anyways this slid into a discussion about moral absolutes and objective truth. He made the argument that choices have to be restricted when they violate moral absolutes. We didn't really have time to finish our whole discussion and so I didn't have a chance to say a whole lot after that.

So in summary my real question is I need to know more about the whole debate of objective truth before I go back to talk with him. We got into it a little bit and so I heard some of his rebuttals already.

I guess the thing I don't know how to explain to him that he brought up to me is how I can disbelief in objective truth in theory but not in practice. He seemed to think it is sort of inescapable and that everyone really believed in it whether they realized it or not.

So please any advice that anyone can give me on the situation would be helpful, I just want to be prepared for our next encounter so I don't go out looking like a fool.

Thanks guys

"Rape" is a crime....in the non-muslim world anyway and abortion is not in the United States.

However, he has a right to his opinion....fucked up as it is...and if he wants to pray or otherwise talk to himself outside an abortion clinic he has that right....as long as he complies with local laws about such protests.

It is the price of living in a free society. Unfortunately, assholes like him do not really believe in a free society. They think they have a right to have their superstitions enacted into law which is a whole other problem.


( You might ask him how he feels about those same priests and bishops who are telling him to protest abortion either buttfucking children or covering up for those that do?)

Quote:"Rape" is a crime....in the non-muslim world anyway and abortion is not in the United States.

yea that's true but his whole thing is that what's legal isn't always what is moral or that the law doesn't make morality. He used the example of slavery being at one time legal but now we say it is immoral as well as killing the jews being legal for Nazi's at one time although we know such acts are objectively wrong always he says. I guess his point is that there are objective moral laws that stand outside time and space in a sense I guess.

Is there another way of explaining that something like murdering innocent people (as his example) is wrong without having to concede to his standards of objective truth?

He has a first amendment right to speak if he wants. The issue is a living, breathing, woman who wants to have control of her own body as opposed to some fucking hypocrite who thinks that a gob of goo somehow trumps that and gives him the right to sentence her to 18 years of hard labor because of his silly-ass god. Citing religious teachings strikes me as stupid because his god is a murderous fuck when he wants to be and he is also representing the views of one of the most immoral bunches of bastards at large in the world today but he DOES have a right to be wrong.

(July 24, 2011 at 5:47 pm)Hurny Wrote:

Quote:"Rape" is a crime....in the non-muslim world anyway and abortion is not in the United States.

yea that's true but his whole thing is that what's legal isn't always what is moral or that the law doesn't make morality. He used the example of slavery being at one time legal but now we say it is immoral as well as killing the jews being legal for Nazi's at one time although we know such acts are objectively wrong always he says. I guess his point is that there are objective moral laws that stand outside time and space in a sense I guess.

Is there another way of explaining that something like murdering innocent people (as his example) is wrong without having to concede to his standards of objective truth?

You might want to remind him that both of those are still legal and encouraged according to his 'Holy book'. Actually, rape is as well so he kind of IS pro-rape.

Quote:He has a first amendment right to speak if he wants. The issue is a living, breathing, woman who wants to have control of her own body as opposed to some fucking hypocrite who thinks that a gob of goo somehow trumps that and gives him the right to sentence her to 18 years of hard labor because of his silly-ass god. Citing religious teachings strikes me as stupid because his god is a murderous fuck when he wants to be and he is also representing the views of one of the most immoral bunches of bastards at large in the world today but he DOES have a right to be wrong.

Quote:You might want to remind him that both of those are still legal and encouraged according to his 'Holy book'. Actually, rape is as well so he kind of IS pro-rape.

The thing is that this guy is different like I said. I did use some arguments about a full grown woman vs. a fetus but he knew all these medical facts that he sited like about the fetus having a complete genetic code and everything thing the same as a full grown adult with the only difference being growth and maturity. He even showed me these video's on his I-Phone about about fetal development. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0WNRR-ep...re=related

I wasn't prepared enough for all the details of the abortion argument and I'm still not really sure how to respond to this stuff, but I sort of moved off the abortion topic onto the objective truth thing instead.

His whole thing is that he wasn't quoting from the bible or citing from religious teachings as you say and so when I made any attacks on his faith he simply said these are all things knowable by reason. So I think if I want t be effective with him I am going to have to beat him with reason.

What do medical facts have to do with the price of tea?

He is a fanatic. To his way of thinking all that matters is that some woman who he does not know MUST give birth to a child she does not want. He is not helping to raise it. He is not supporting it. He probably votes for Republican shitheads who want to scrap programs which assist such people.

The fetus cannot survive without the mother until, realistically in this country, it graduates high school. Where is you co-worker in all of that? He's out there insisting that more women be forced into poverty because they got knocked up. Fuck him and all those like him. He is not pro-life. He is anti-woman.

(July 24, 2011 at 6:22 pm)Hurny Wrote: I am going to have to beat him with reason.

You're fucked!

(July 24, 2011 at 6:35 pm)Minimalist Wrote: What do medical facts have to do with the price of tea?

He is a fanatic. To his way of thinking all that matters is that some woman who he does not know MUST give birth to a child she does not want. He is not helping to raise it. He is not supporting it. He probably votes for Republican shitheads who want to scrap programs which assist such people.

The fetus cannot survive without the mother until, realistically in this country, it graduates high school. Where is you co-worker in all of that? He's out there insisting that more women be forced into poverty because they got knocked up. Fuck him and all those like him. He is not pro-life. He is anti-woman.

yeah I don't know, I mean like I said I want to try to beat him more on the grounds of reason concentrated on his arguments rather then attacks on him or his religion. All that you've mentioned on abortion won't get me very far with him because

1) his church does have programs to help supply women with resources/shelter etc, and while I might not believe in his god I don't think I agree with all of the attacks on his religion because from what he has shown me so far they seem to be pretty decent people.

and 2) his entire argument is based on the objective truth of abortion as murder of a person, so even if they didn't take care of the woman or whatever were still debating on the grounds of whether or not killing a person is ok or not objectivly. So if I could get advice more on those grounds I think it would be helpful

That's his definition. Legally, a fetus is not a "person." End of story.

I wonder how many black, crack-addicted, babies his fucking church helps?